On Friday night, a 39-year-old mother of three officiated in an NFL pre-season game. A week earlier, there was a woman at the helm of a Silversea cruise ship for the first time. These things are one day going to be old news, especially the latter.
While Sarah Thomas was the first female to be a pro football official, Margrith Ettlin 
(left) is — by our unofficial count — the fourth woman to be captain of a cruise ship, in her case the Silver Explorer.
The first was Karin Stahre-Jansen (below, right), who became the "master" of Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas, then sailing 
Mexican Riviera cruises from Los Angeles. That was in 2007. Three years later, Sarah Breton became captain of P&O's Pacific Pearl, in Australia. And last month, what might be called the most traditional of cruise lines — Cunard — welcomed Captain Inger Olsen as she guided the Queen Victoria into her first port, in the Faroe Islands.
In an age when women go to war, presumably doing whatever their male counterparts are called upon to do, there is of course no reason why a woman shouldn't be qualified to be in charge of a mega-ton cruise ship. Even to the most chauvinistic of observers, it's not like she has to jump off the deck and tie up these monstrosities.
One day, it will cease to be news that a woman is a cruise ship captain, just like it has that a woman is flying a commercial airliner or driving a semi or wrestling a steer to the ground.
And that day can't come soon enough, can it?
Carnival Freedom
6 nights
September 15, 2013
Fort Lauderdale (return): Key West, Grand Cayman, Ocho Rios
Inside: $279
Cost per day: $46
www.carnival.com